In May 2021, Denver Arts & Venues was still sending out releases calling the city s cultural plan Imagine 2020. Looking back over the past year, who d want to do that?
In 2014, then-Arts & Venues head Kent Rice and his team, which included current agency director Ginger White, did. At the time, imagining far-off 2020 seemed a little sci-fi, but in a hopeful way. Only a prophet of doom would predict the dystopian hellscape of fascists attempting to do away with democracy, police killings and riots, and mass death from a pandemic that marked the actual 2020.
Last year, we saw mass layoffs in the cultural sector and venues dark as catacombs, some boarding up for good. We couldn t physically escape into entertainment, liberating ourselves if only for a night at concerts, either: Even outdoor amphitheater Red Rocks, which generates a massive amount of the cultural agency s revenue, sat mostly empty.
Red Rocks Amphitheatre Celebrates 80th Anniversary Season With Pandemic Tribute from Caring Coloradans
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Performers included firefighters and first responders who played their bagpipes and drums for communities across the state and an ICU nurse whose voice was the sound of caring during the pandemic.
Raditya “Rad” Muljadi is an 11-year-old fifth-grader from Parker, CO. His performance at Red Rocks was a showstopper, as he wowed and inspired the crowd of 2,500 attendees.
For more than eight decades, Red Rocks has hosted the biggest acts in music history, but few performances had more heart on stage than what we saw tonight.
While many art forms have hit a dead end during the pandemic, murals have continued to spread across Colorado. But if you want to venture out to see street-art paintings past and present, good luck: It s not easy to track them down much less trace their historic roots.
There s no map or guidebook that tells the story of the art on walls and buildings around the state. No cultural institution preserves its history, either. Not History Colorado. Not the Western History Collection at the Denver Public Library. Not the Denver Art Museum. That makes it difficult to determine what s been painted, who did it when.and why. Sometimes, the where disappears altogether.